Thoughts on Life, Love, Politics, Hypocrisy and Coming Out in Mid-Life

Friday, January 06, 2017

AMA Warns Republicans on Obamacare Repeal

Sadly, Congressional Republicans find themselves near orgasm over their closeness to repealing the Affordable Health Care Act in their effort to diminish the legacy of the nation's first black president and pander to the GOP's white supremacist base. The problem is that Republicans have ZERO plan as to what will replace Obamacare. Mere repeal without a replacement plan will throw somewhere between 20 and 30 million Americans off of healthcare coverage. Even cretins in red states that voted for Der Fuhrer and Republican candidates seem to be waking up to the reality that they have royally f*cked themselves over. Sadly, they were too stupid or too lazy to look beyond Trump/GOP appeals to racism, bigotry and religious extremism to see that they were being played by a group of con artists. Others are alarmed to at the pending healthcare catastrophe, including the American Medical Association ("AMA") which has issued a letter to Congress warning Republicans to refrain from a repeal of Obamacare until a viable replacement plan is set to be rolled out. Think Progress looks at the AMA's cautionary warning. Here are excerpts:

The
largest group of doctors in the country is cautioning Republican leaders to come up
with a real plan to replace Obamacare before forging ahead with repeal.

On Tuesday, Republicans took the first step toward rolling back the
law, introducing a budget resolution that will allow Congress
to sidestep a Democratic filibuster and dismantle key parts of Obamacare.
Republican leaders have signaled they plan to use this budget process to
produce legislation by January 27 that includes repealing
portions of health reform.

But repealing Obamacare is the easy part. What to do next is much harder — and GOP lawmakers don’t have
that part figured out.

Although
Republicans have been railing against Obamacare for the better part of six
years, they haven’t come up with any concrete policy ideas to reshape our
nation’s complicated insurance industry and prevent 20 million Americans from
losing the health coverage they gained under Obamacare. GOP leaders have never
been able to coalesce around a meaningful plan.

Instead, Republicans have suggested they’ll throw the insurance industry into chaos by
repealing Obamacare now and figuring out how to replace it later. This
strategy, dubbed “repeal and delay,” threatens to create widespread uncertainty
in the industry as major insurers will be unclear where the country might be
headed with its national health care policy.

That’s pretty concerning to the American Medical
Association — one of the most powerful lobbying groups in the United
States — which sent a letter to Republican leaders on Tuesday urging a
different approach.

Before
rushing to repeal Obamacare, Republican leaders in Congress need to come up
with a real plan that has enough details to prove it will be better than the
existing realities under the health care law, the AMA wrote.

“Policymakers should lay out for the American people, in
reasonable detail, what will replace current policies,” the letter reads. “Patients and other stakeholders
should be able to clearly compare current policy to new proposals so they can
make informed decisions about whether it represents a step forward in the
ongoing process of health reform.”

The AMA, hardly known for its progressive policy positions,
isn’t the only major conservative-leaning group cautioning against the GOP’s
“repeal and delay” approach.

Scholars
from the American Enterprise Institute, a prominent libertarian think tank, published a piece in Health Affairs
on Tuesday arguing that “repeal and delay” is the wrong path forward because it
“carries too much risk” and “is unlikely to produce a coherent reform of health
care in the United States.”

“If
Congress fails to vote on a replacement at the same time as repeal, the
repealers risk assuming the blame for the continued unraveling of Obamacare,”
GOP Sen. Rand Paul wrote in an op-ed published Tuesday.

Nonetheless, GOP leaders appear to be barreling forward.

Donald Trump and Paul Ryan, both raised as children of wealth and privilege do not give a damn about Americans now at risk of losing healthcare coverage. Indeed, Ryan is hell bent on transforming American back to a scene out of a Dickens novel. These men and their fellow repealers are morally bankrupt and disgusting.

Translate This Page

Contact Me to Order Title Work

LGBT Legal Services

About Me

Out gay attorney in a committed relationship; formerly married and father of three wonderful children; sometime activist and political/news junkie; survived coming out in mid-life and hope to share my experiences and reflections with others.
In the career/professional realm, I am affiliated with Caplan & Associates PC where I practice in the areas of real estate, estate planning (Wills, Trusts, Advanced Medical Directives, Financial Powers of Attorney, Durable Medical Powers of Attorney); business law and commercial transactions; formation of corporations and limited liability companies and legal services to the gay, lesbian and transgender community, including birth certificate amendment.

Disclaimer on Opinions and Content

This Blog contains content that may be innapropriate for readers under the legal age of 18. IF YOU ARE UNDER 18 YEARS OF AGE, PLEASE LEAVE NOW. Thank you

This is an opinion and commentary blog and the opinions and contents of this Blog - including opinions expressed concerning opponents of LGBT equality - are the opinions only of the individual blogger and should not be attributed to any other individuals or to any organization of which the blogger is a past or current member.

Followers

Michael-in-Norfolk disclaims any and all responsibility or liability for the accuracy, content, completeness, legality, reliability, operability, or availability of information or material displayed on this site and does not claim credit for any images or articles featured on this site, unless otherwise noted. All visual content is copyrighted to it's respectful owners. Information on this site may contain errors or inaccuracies, and Michael-in-Norfolk does not make warranty as to the correctness or reliability of the site's content. If you own rights to any of the images or articles, and do not wish them to appear on this site, please contact Michael-in-Norfolk via e-mail and they will be promptly removed. Michael-in-Norfolk contains links to other Internet sites. These links are provided solely as a convenience and are not endorsements of any products or services in such sites, and no information or content in such site has been endorsed or approved by this blog.